Psychosomatic Remembrances
by SharpAndSweet
Summary: When Mark injures his leg it opens up some fissure to the past, and a life lived long ago that he cannot remember, but desperately does not want to forget.
1. Chapter 1

Rights and So forth; Nope. Don't own anything.

Warnings; Nothing explicit is happening. This is actually really tame.

Rating; Probably PG for language.

**Psychosomatic Remembrances**

**Part One**

"So. How have you been, Mark?" Dr. Armstrong's voice is orderly and mellow. Like her office. A place for everything, everything in it's place.

"Good. Yeah. Good." Mark sat in the chair beside the desk and discreetly wiped his palms on his jeans, and then forced his fingers to lie flat.

"How was the vacation?" Dr. Armstrong asks, smiling.

"Good." He realized that was a lot of good for the space of a minute and hastens to elaborate. "I, uh, tried what you suggested; just relaxing, no late nights, no parties. Lots of quiet. Bummed around the condo a lot. Pool, you know." He didn't think his parents believed he needed the place in Florida just for relaxation, but then, they didn't really care what he got up to while there as long as it didn't result in copious property damage.

"How did your leg like swimming?"

Mark looked down at the limb in question.

It had healed almost to perfection. He was done with physical therapy, and the doctor was more or less at the 'fuck off, my surgical awesomeness has cured you, bring on the next challenge' point in their relationship. The break had been clean. Mark had the X-rays to prove it. It seemed like everyone was only too happy to tell him that he'd been lucky. So lucky. He could be maimed. He could be dead. A big cumbersome cast, and months later it came out, skinny and smelly and whole. All the x-rays looked good. He didn't even have a fierce scar to scar small children with.

If only it would stop hurting.

"It's still bothering you." Dr. Armstrong supplied when it went quiet a long time. Mark nodded, rubbing his palms on his pants again. He didn't know why Dr. Armstrong made him nervous. Maybe it was the suits. Always black, with these sets of jewelry that matched. Her pen was always poised over the notepad, and her gaze was always dipping from him as she scribbled. He never tried to read her upside down writing. He didn't think he wanted to know.

"What about the dreams? Did you have any while you were gone?"

Mark nodded.

"Can you tell me about them? Were they different?"

Mark closed his eyes and dredged back, fumbling through thoughts left greasy once passed through wakefulness. He'd known the question would come, and wished all the quiet and relaxation and borne some fruit. For months he'd tried keeping a Dream Journal on the understanding that extended documentation could sharpen clarity. It had been bullshit. He felt weird writing down his dreams, even when they were ordinary. Like a fifteen year old girl chronicling her acid trips.

"Nothing new. Same old." He rubbed the knee. It ached.

Her eyes flick down, then back up to his face. "Does it hurt now?"

He nods again. Duh.

Her abrupt change in stance sent the hairs on Mark's arm prickling, as she leaned forward and folded her hands on the desk, over the top of her notes.

"Mark," She broaches patiently "We've talked about how this pain you are experiencing is psychosomatic. Your doctors can't find any reason for it."

"My leg hurts." Mark repeats, knowing he sounds stubborn. He's heard this. It's insulting when Doctors look down their nose at him and tell him he isn't in pain, when some nights he just lies there and feels it ache. They think he just wants the painkillers, or at least one hinted at that. That getting hooked on prescription pills was sucky and how he was glad Mark wasn't going down that hole, because, clearly everything in his leg was fine.

Jesus, when had he become this guy? Catherine used to call him 'her goofy poodle'. He used to be unrelentingly good natured. Now he was just...crabby. It was seriously not right.

"I'm sure it does. We've talked about a lot of things together, but I think we can agree that you and I might not find the answers you are seeking."

"So, what? You want to get rid of me?" It came out snappier than he meant it, on the heels of insult.

"No. But I do want you to get better; there is something eating at you Mark, and I haven't been successful at getting to the core of it. Part of being a good Doctor is to know when your methods aren't working." She smiles. Probably it was a reassuring smile. Other patients had been assured by it. "I want you to go see colleague of mine," She had the business card already out, he saw. It had been tucked under her pad. She handed it to him. Cindra Thorton. There was a little butterfly next to the name. It made Mark's stomach cleanch.

He looked up at Dr. Armstrong. "A hypnotherapist?" He couldn't keep the incredulity and disdain from his tones.

Dr. Armstrong leaned back in her chair. "You have something against hypnotherapy?"

He didn't mention that it was probably more bullshit than the bullshit he was already forced to endure. He just looked at the little card, saying nothing.

"I think Cindra might be able to help you find the answers you're seeking, Mark. You just have to be open to it."

Hypnotherapy. It's all he can think of; goofy tv shows where hypnotized people strut around like chickens or are forced to forget things they witnessed, like murder. He jams the card in his pocket, no intention of calling some woman with a butterfly on her business card. Sure, his Dad would pick up the tab, as he had Dr. Armstrong's, but that was because he felt bad about his gimp son, and signing a check was a way of showing some parental concern from the deck of a yacht.

Mark goes home, to his apartment. It's untidy, but spartan. He doesn't know what to do now he has been chucked over by his therapist. Psychologist. Whatever Dr. Armstrong had been. Not the kind that prescribed pills.

He doesn't know what to do. Not just about therapy, or the leg that bursts into shuddering agony or low throb as the mood takes it. About any of it. Life. Job. Every thing he had thought was going to work out charmed- and hadn't things always seemed rosy for him?- had turned sideways and melted. He isn't going to call some hypnotherapist so she can tell him his leg hurts because his life is fucked. He knows that.

Mark can't run any more, but he rustles himself into work-out clothes and walks the two blocks to the closest twenty four hour gym. He's a member. When he can't sleep he comes and he lifts, and if his leg isn't acting up jump-ropes, or uses the machines. He'd gotten flabby, during recovery. He wasn't quite back to the operating condition he wanted to be.

Not mentally, either, he was forced to admit. When he was spinning in a hospital bed, his leg maybe destroyed the sensation that settled over him was of dissatisfaction, as if he'd shed some part of his skin and left unknown things pink and raw. When he wandered back into his life, there were things about it he didn't care for, and couldn't place why.

He works out until his mind is smooth and blank, until there is nothing but the burn of well used muscles. He doesn't rise to the occasion when a blonde in a sports bra strikes up a conversation and asks him out for a smoothie, which is a pity, since she was was sporting a pair of tits that were just his favorite kind; full enough to hold onto without loosing the perk. It's not that he doesn't find her attractive, because he watched her stretch out and was not unmotivated in his pants. It's just not...right, somehow.

He goes home, worn enough to dull his mind. He opens a beer and eases himself onto the couch. The hollow apartment fills with the mindless drone of television as he flicks it on then abandons the remote in his lap. There is a thumping from the floor above in protest, so Mark notches the sound down.

He lets his brain ooze. Ignores the crumpled business card on the table. Pledges to forget about going into work tomorrow and the path he cannot find and what the fuck he has against beautiful women with nice tits that want to fuck him. He watches things he isn't really interested in. Sitcom re-runs. Endless commercials for cel phones. Infomercials.

When he dipped into sleep, he doesn't know. Only that he is there, in the throng of it. Sounds thunder around him, and he knows there are horses here, and men. Each shouts and screams in the chaotic frenzy that is battle. The rattle and clang of weapons is all around him. There is a sword in his hand, and he knows the grip intimately. He knows battle. He knows this hideous mess, just as he thinks it should be more orderly, with troops formed in shapes with training. Not this melee. There is no leader shouting commands. Just a seething knot of men trying to end one and other. How many are injured by their own comrades in the frenzy? It's undisciplined.

Opponents lunge for him and he dispatches them with ease, their faces nothing but feature-less smudges that fall away. Men keep coming for him, armed in all manner of ways, but they don't daunt him. It isn't the fight that has fear blooming in his chest. It is something else. Some fervent need that lays on his chest like a granite block, and has for the last year. A need that sits on his chest at all hours, even the ones he tries to press it away.

He didn't always slip into the dream so easy. It's been slow, coming this far. At first it was just him standing, holding a blade, sensation a vague echo. Then he was on a battlefield, bodies crashing against each other, first in slow motion, then in gradually richer detail. Then he was moving through the sea as it churned around him. No matter how clear it became, purpose was always resounding through his body.

His leg hurts when he twists away from a lunge and it almost buckles under his weight. It hampers him. He would be moving with sleek ease if not for the way it hobbled him.

A horse falls before him, shrieking as the rider's hands flail. He blocks, but his body, always so strong and reliable, feels as if he is running through peanut butter, and he must, must surge through the bottleneck of people. He must find-!

Mark wakes up yelling, his leg singing in agony. He's sagged to his stomach on the couch, the beer bottle sweating on the coffee table. The call was desperate and seeking, and Mark doesn't know why, only that he hurts, from the inside out.

"Mark Waterman." Cindra Thorton has a dreamy quality to her voice, a low thrum. She takes his hand. Hers is very warm.

They go into her office, a space that is small and dim. It doesn't look as dippy as Mark thought it would. There are no wind chimes or statues of angels. Just a bowl of fancy polished rocks and a reclining leather armchair with a blanket folded across the back. He chooses to sit in the waiting-room type chair across from the desk.

They sit for a pointedly long time in silence. Cindra just looks at him. He thinks she must be fifty, with squinty glasses and a long braid going gray she hasn't bothered to dye.

"What would you like to tell me?" She asks at last.

Mark stops himself from rubbing his fingers over his eyes. He knows she's read the paperwork he meticulously filled out, asking him what he wanted to achieve through hypnosis, and so he just summarizes. "My leg hurts. Everyone says it's in my head; I broke it on a run upstate, when a hillside gave way. Too much rain. I had to wait in the ravine, in the river until someone else came along. Now it's healed and I have the dreams. And all of a sudden I keep thinking nothing is right. Nothing is the way it should be." He doesn't mean it to be rude, and he hopes the weariness of it all seeps into this woman. He can't really say how farting around at his Dad's firm now seems a purposeless exorcize because he has the feeling there should be more. It sounds too much like he looked death in the face and found himself, a useless playboy, wanting, and that is not it.

"I see you wrote 'this is not about my parents being terminally uninterested in me'."

"Everyone goes right to the Daddy and Mommy issues. This has nothing to do with them. They are people who had me. I was raised by good people who did love me, despite the paycheck they were given for my welfare. I know that. I don't want to waste time examining it."

She doesn't write anything down, but looks at him again for a long time before asking questions. Some of them are the same as Dr. Armstrong's. Who. What. Where. Why. How. He answers, trying hard not to be curt.

He isn't precisely sure how he ends up reclined in the chair with the blanket covering him. One thing led to another, and he found himself listening to her sleepy, even voice, guiding him down stairs into a deep-sleep mode. He isn't really sure that he is under, despite her prior reassurances that she would be looking for signs, except that he feels slightly sluggish. He still feels 'here' when every dramatic representation of hypnosis featured people apparently out of their skulls. He's here and doubting.

But he finds, when she asks him questions, answers bubble from the back of his mind. They don't do anything very strenuous. She familiarizes herself with him, suggest that his mind be open, that when under her care this deep sleep place be one of safety and. She asks him to find a Special Place in his mind. A place where he is safe. He pictures a riverbed in a glen, not unlike the one he spent five miserable November hours waiting in. It's greener. Lush. Colder. Icy water rushes, and above trees blot out most of the sun. An empty funeral pyre is laid on the shore. It fills his mind, almost unexpectedly, this unseen place. It _is_ a special place, for some reason. It's enough to make him feel strangely calm when he leaves the office.

He wants to think it's bullshit, but reserves his opinion. He doesn't know why answers flutter to his lips when he is under. That's the thing he hates about hypnosis. It isn't easy. It's not like opening a book and reading what your subconscious has written down. Sometimes he knows answers, but doesn't know why. Sometimes there are no answers, despite how he hungers for them. Yet even more times, the answers only bring more questions. He finds himself shedding silent tears unexpectedly while under. It's embarrassing.

The weeks pass. It's different. Something is happening to him, even if he isn't sure what it is.

One day Cindra takes him down stairs, more stairs than ever before. Deeper and deeper down, until his feet are heavy as stone. They go to his Special Place. He doesn't think of it as a joke anymore. She asks him to tell her about it again, even though he's described it to her a couple of times already. He does. He tells her about the trees, and the water, and the pyre.

"Who are you, when you see this place?" She asks.

What? She knows who he is.

"I am Marcus Flavius Aquila." He answers.

It terrifies him. That isn't his name!

Cindra's voice is soothing. "Why does your leg hurt?"

"I was wounded in the service of Rome. I am lamed." It's like he's speaking, but he isn't.

"Are you a Roman Soldier?"

"Yes. No." Both answers are right. Ironic. He'd secretly wanted to go into the armed forced when he was young, make a difference. His parents disapproved.

"Marcus, the time when you lived is long passed. You aren't Marcus, any more. You're Mark. You must let the pain of your leg go. You don't need it."

"No. I cannot."

"You cannot what?"

"Let the pain go."

"Why can't you let it go?"

"..." He falters, but the answer is there. "So...I'll remember."

"What do you need to remember?"

He surfaces, like something is pulling him. Not like when Cindra eases him back. It's harsh and hard because he knows there is something to remember. He just doesn't know what. Cindra smiles. These things take time. This is really excellent progress. He should be really pleased.

Which of course, precipitates a month long plateau.

He's agitated, swimming through the shapeless pictures he realizes must be memories, and not boogeymen he peopled his dream with from Braveheart and Gladiator. Memories from some other time and place, when he was named Marcus Flavius Aquila and he was a Roman Centurion. When he inhales he can smell it. Dirt. Sweat. Horse. Manure. Leather and the sweet metal and wet scent that is spilled blood, spilled gore. He knows the fingers of his sword hand are twitching atop his knee back in the real world, but he can't make that stop. He doesn't know how much he is saying out loud, only that the mumble is constant, that as he sees images, their description spills from his mouth, as he lives it half thoughts that float across his mind drip from his lips.

He isn't frightened for himself, even though his leg throbs. A centurion shouldn't be afraid. And he's not. He's faced battle before. He's afraid for _him_. The thing unremembered.

"What are you looking for, Marcus?" It's a voice from above, prompting as he scans the shaky, indistinct horizon. It's just over there. Not that many steps now. He just has to pass along the dirt field, the skim down the embankment.

A body slams into his. Jarring. No, a shield. There is a scream of foul breath and he wields his sword. He circles his opponent, frustrated because he doesn't have time for this.

"What are you looking for, Marcus?"

He's supporting the corpse, his sword buried into the gut. Wetness floods over her belly, hot. He shoves the corpse away. It tumbles with a cloud of dust. He jumps over it.

He can't see! There is sweat in his eyes, and the world is listing and he's trying not to panic. He skims to the top of the embankment, but there's a horrible, new feeling in his gut. It boils and sears him, and he's crying. A feeling that as much as he wants to run down and shove men away from the embankment, he won't want to know what was beyond, but he has to go anyway. Where is he, where is he?

He's scanning, searching through the bodies, through the figures, looking, heart shuddering. He can't find him. By Mithras, where is he?

It rips out of him. A scream. "Esca! ESCA?"

He's out. Shot out of hypnosis. Shuddering and his face wet. It's humiliating. His heart is frantic in his ears. He throws off the blanket because he's sweating so badly it smothers him, then claps his hands over his chest. They're shaking too, so he digs them into his flesh.

It's still in his nose. The smell of it. The adrenaline of combat sings through him and he wants to think it's all bullshit, bullshit except that he knows it's not. Something in him longs, a keen ache rent open by a name.

"I'm not gay," He says when he can summon breath and the will to make words. They sound strangely sullen. Defensive.

Cindra just looks at him.

"I'm not!"

"I didn't say you were, Mark. You were on a battlefield. You could be searching for a comrade. A brother. A father."

He can't stay. He can't stay and be with a past centuries dead that creeps up on him. He makes to get up, but Cindra holds up a hand.

"Just rest a minute."

He doesn't want to, but he realizes his knees are like liquid. He doesn't slide back into the embrace of the chair, but holds his hands behind the neck of his down turned head.

"Emotions from past lives can be difficult. Sometimes when we die, we have regrets or feelings we don't shed from one life to the next, so we bring them with us. We might not even know they are there, until something reminds us of them." He can feel her eyes on his leg, "I think Marcus Flavius Aquila had a wounded leg, and when you broke yours, that same leg, some chain to the past came to the surface."

He rubbed his knee. It didn't hurt now. All during the session it ached in a back burner way, but now lay silent.

"It's important for you to know that you are safe, that Esca is safe. That these are long past memories that you can let go."

"Let go?"

"Yes. You are not Marcus anymore. Marcus' life came to an end. It's alright to let those feelings pass, and move on with your life here and now."

He lays in bed that night, reflecting. His leg didn't hurt. Could a name have chased away pain? Had it all truly been in his head? Was this person all in his head too? Some phantom he was making up?

He rolled. Esca. The name was strange, and though he wracked his brain and demanded that hidden part divest itself of its secrets about the foreign name, no image came to his mind's eye. He couldn't form a face to match the name.

And he knew it was a male. The name could have been ambiguous, but Mark knew it was a man he had been desperately seeking. A fierce and loyal one. Small. Yes. Small, but deadly. Someone who made something tender bend in Marcus that was defiantly not platonic. Within, Mark knew Marcus was frantic for someone who lived inside his heart the way a lover did.

Marcus was a big gay dope.

"You're Marcus." Mark reminds himself in the dark.

It was strange to think about. He'd never been into men. Not even as a curiosity. He'd been in enough locker rooms to know the sight of a male nude body did nothing for him. He liked girls. He slept with girls and never imagined they were men.

He tried an appraising look at the men on the street when he was driving home from his appointment. The tinted windows maintained his dignity, but try as he might he didn't feel anything. Could he be gay in one life and straight in the next? Maybe since it was a part of your DNA, you flipped back and forth as genetics commanded. Fuck, it was all so confusing.

Another roll, onto his stomach and he groaned into his pillow. If someone had told him months ago that past lives were real, that he would be believing in them, he might have laughed in their face. He pulled a pillow over his head to block out the world and tried to sleep.

"Let it go." He orders himself.

When he slept he had a regular dream. He was insanely glad for it.

It was freer, somehow. He found himself moving through the apartment of a Saturday with actual goals in mind for the day instead of distractions to edge him through it. He put all the weirdness into a little box in his brain and set it aside. He paid bills. He cleaned. He answered email. He went grocery shopping.

"You certainly sound better," said Catherine on the phone at mid-day. "You were getting pretty maudlin there. Are you still in therapy?"

"Yeah. New therapist. It's good. It's different. At first I didn't want to go, but I'm glad I did."

"That's great Mark. Do you think you'll be up to come to my birthday thing? I'd really love it if you can, but if you can't, I'll understand."

Mark always wants to oblige her. She's always been there for him, after all. "Where is it this year?"

"Skiing. Aspen."

Mark's hesitation had Catherine rushing to fill the void.

"You don't have to skii. I mean, some of the kids don't. Just come. Relax. There will be drinking and dancing and hot coco around the fire. All the best stuff. Heated pool, spa- you could get a massage for the leg and a facial since you have also been looking haggard."

Mark shifted his weight. Actually, the leg hadn't made nary a peep. Not all day. Without being premature, he was pleased. "Wait. Haggard?"

"Do you prefer broodsomely worn?"

"Gee, how you flatter."

"Telling it like it is, babe, and you are wiped. I know you did your monk retreat solitary confinement thing in Miami a while back, but maybe this could be a 'Pampercation'?"

"Who's coming to this birthday thing?"

"Oh, everyone!" She was happy to spout off not only the guest list, but some gossip relating to persons on it. He liked hearing her steady enthusiasm, even if the words blurred a bit. A lot of the people he only saw once a year at Catherine's parties, even though he'd gone to the same prep school and college as they had. Some of them were part of a social circle that cycled through Catherine's life. She liked people, and people liked her. People liked Mark, too. They always remembered his name, were always happy to see him. Catherine once told him it was because he was 'obscenely likeable'.

She moves on. Chattering Catherine, and all he has to do is make a few noises of assent or disbelief and she's happy. It's what he wants, in a way. Something normal. Something simple. However, Catherine has been a friend since childhood, never a romantic interest and she knows him, even though she can be a bit garrulous .

"So...When are we going to talk, Mark?" Sober tones redirect his attention.

"Aren't we talking? I've heard about half the population of New York by now."

"Really talk. About, like, important stuff."

"I seem to remember quite a bit about your ex-fiance, there. And my monkish- and I'm sure this isn't a word- broodsomeness."

"The stuff that is making you broody." She waits him out.

Mark sighs. "It's...complicated. And it's weird."

"This is why you need friends. To make it simple and accept the weird."

"This is weirder than usual."

He doesn't tell her. He will, just, not now. The things running around his head are too loony for him to take seriously, and he can't imagine having to try to say them, especially the 'Hey, guess what I may have been this Roman gay guy with a lot of issues once, but not any more, clearly, except for this guy I am totally hung up on from that life and the fact that he had issues is giving me some issues' part. Catherine wouldn't make fun, he was pretty sure of that much. Still. He could hardly tell her he was missing some dude from beyond the grave; it wasn't something he was comfortable with. She'd ask him if he was gay, and he'd say no, like he'd been saying no to himself, but she'd have doubts, because, how could she not?._ He _had doubts.

He didn't go back to see Cindra the following week. Or the next. Neither did he have any more dreams that awoke him alert and seeking. The pain in his leg didn't come back either, even when he tried jogging on it one morning. He'd missed this morning constitution. Sure, he kept in shape in the gym, but running was different. You were actually going somewhere, blowing the clouds from your head, letting your feet take over. He didn't even hold a grudge with the running path that had landed him in this mess, though he was sticking with city streets and pedestrian parks.

However, none of it left his mind. The issue has simply moved from his unconscious, where it loomed uncontrolled in dreams, into his conscious. He tried to shove it aside, not to think about who the man he was hung up on was, and what regrets Marcus may have had, but it would pop in. While he was reading the ingredients on a prepackaged smoothie. As he banged out mind-numbing reports at work. As he fell asleep. He would try to picture this person, trying to fit him into molds, to figure out what the regret was. He'd shove it viciously way when he realized he was trying to paint some picture. It always came back. Esca. Someone calling to him across death and time. No. Not calling. Someone tearing at him with fingernails.

It frightened him. Because whoever this person was, he didn't have psychic X-man powers to break into Mark's brain. Esca wasn't doing anything. Esca was dead a thousand years or more. It was Mark himself who wanted something of this man, whatever part of him was Marcus, which was as good as himself, because wasn't he him?

He redoubled his efforts not to think about it. In a month, distractions aside, things were good. His leg didn't bloom into pain. He didn't dream. He was cured. He didn't resent his job, he loved his job! It made lots of money. He didn't want to screw men, he picked up women and took them home where he forgot about stuff as long as there were two bodies tangled in the sheets. He was good. He was happy.

In retrospect you should never think stupid shit like that. It just tempts the fates to fuck with you.


	2. Chapter 2

Rights and So forth; I haven't come into a windfall by which I own the movie, book, or Chan and Jamie. I'll letcha all know if this changes.

Warnings; Still nothing filthy happening. Just the sap.

Rating; PG

**Psychosomatic Remembrances**

**Part Two**

Mark jogged every morning. He followed his feet, which meant he could follow a familiar track, or find a totally new route, when his mind wandered and he didn't pay attention to where he was going. The world was repairing itself, and he was quick to constantly remind himself it felt good to be falling into a few old patterns.

This morning was overcast. Not really wet, just gray and sloppy. He rounded the corner in the park, taking the path back toward the street. The sound of the air traveling through his body shuddered under the sound of the music thrumming through the iPod.

He didn't know what happened first. He suspects he saw the sign first, and his knee bloomed in thudding agony for the first time in months and he has to slow to a stop, supporting himself on a bench, and cursing so hard a woman escorts a little girl away while throwing him a dirty look.

He shook his leg and even bounced on it, as if that would force the ache away

"Not now!" He demands to the limb, but he thinks that this is what people who loose remission must feel- clawing some shadow of wellness to stay while it flees into the night. He curses again, lower and under his breath, limp- pacing from one bench across the way to the other, until he collapses into one and cups his head. It's a long time before he looks up

It's attached to a light post, one of those vertical banners cities use. A lot of them, one after the other flanking the wide central avenue that cuts through the middle of the park. They alternate one with an empty eyed marble bust on a background of mosaic tiles, and another with a sword and circular shield. 'The Artifacts of Rome', a traveling exhibit, and the dates.

"Jesus, I know," He mutters to his leg, then tries to sooth the muscle. "I hear you." He doesn't know much, but he knows Marcus had been a Roman Centurion. A long ass time ago Roman Centurion.

It's like his feet won't listen to him, and he hardly notices he's in sweaty jogging clothes, the cord to his ipod wrapped around his neck. He pays admission and is inside as soon as they open the doors, before the school buses pull up full of kids. He doesn't want to be swamped by tiny people who smell like Cheetos and bananas while pursuing his personal demons.

What he wouldn't give to just have his parents be killed so the whole thing could be rectified by putting on a rubber suit, driving a bad-ass car and beating the shit out of criminals with cool weapons. He wasn't even vain enough to need the signal.

He wants it to be familiar, the corroded and worn items propped in glass cases and the dummies in recreated fashion and antique jewelry. There are television screens which read out information and a big interactive display that shows the chronological progress of the Roman army's conquests across the known world, and then their withdrawal as the empire collapses. He wants to find some piece that strikes a bell inside him, but nothing does. Not about the Roman Republic or senate, or the great archeological feats, none of it. Even the decline doesn't inspire any feelings. Sure it's all familiar in that 'Gee, I think I learned that once,' way, but none of it is personal. None of it nudges Marcus out of a stupor to hand over any fucking clues, clues he just pretends he doesn't want because he thought he was over Over OVER it.

By the time he's gotten home, he caves. He shouldn't have gone in. He shouldn't have let it out of the box he tried taping up inside him. Did he let it out, or did the tape burst? Stupid Pandora.

Thankfully, ships over night,

The covers were hokey, especially of the more popular selections. Clouds and mystic women and healing crystals on a lot of them. Inside them there are a lot of false promises and out-right malarky, mystical prose and talk of spirit guides. He throws three different mainstream books against the wall in frustration before switching over to authors who have some kind of an education to their name.

He'd never been great in school, not without Catherine dragging him through what felt pointlessly academic rather than the immediately prudent which he's always been competent at. The abstract and the past just aren't, or, haven't been, his thing. He's a here and now guy.

He wades through chapters on 'Past Life Regression', the potential for healing, and lots of case studies of people who remembered being children locked in closets in the Victorian era who were no longer claustrophobic when the past life revealed itself. He learns a lot, not all of it relevant, but mostly the authors concur that the past should be put to bed, and that people who die violently or unfairly have a better chance of holding onto those memories.

That wasn't what Mark wanted. He needed to settle something with Esca. He didn't know what. Or how. In fact, in light of his new swath of information, if you believed in rebirth, Esca could be an orphan running through the streets of Cairo, a middle aged banker in Shang-hai or a ninety two year old widow with seventeen grandchildren in Finland. He could be anywhere. He could be anyone. He certainly didn't remember Marcus Flavius Aquila. Mark wasn't supposed to remember Marcus. No one was supposed to remember being some dude with a broom on his head in a long ass time ago Rome.

But... that was a thought. Did anyone else remember him? Wasn't history basically all about dead dudes? Did history remember Marcus Flavius Aquila? Wait, was it the Romans who were all pissed at Jesus? No one could remember if Jesus was really a dude who really was, if Marcus was born before Jesus, what were the odds?

The internet didn't have anything to say about Marcus. Or Esca.

So, he went to the library. Then another. Then seven more. Bust.

When Mark hadn't left his apartment in nine days and was surviving on order-in Chinese he called an archeologist who was also a professor on sabbatical from the UK. A lot of published material to his name about the British occupied Rome, which was easier than actually calling Italy since Mark didn't have a word of Italian to his name.

"Marcus Flavius Aquila? Is this for a book or something?" The reedy voice was speculative.

"Or something. I know he was a centurion, but I haven't been able to find any record of him."

"Well, of course not. I've never heard of him, and I would have, believe me. There aren't extensive records about specific Centurions. Where did you get the name?"

"It's not important. " Mark pursed his lips. "What about the name Esca?"

"Esca? Not Roman. Probably has it's roots in a Celtic language."

"Celtic? Like, Irish?"

"Maybe. Variations of it would have been spoken in Britain, into Gaul- France, that is, Germany, even as far down as Spain. A lot of them have died out of course, and it's a debated issue about where what was spoken when. No Celt speakers left written records; we know what we know from Greek and Roman accounts and writing done in the middle ages."

Mark didn't find this has made things any clearer. "I know this is a little sudden, thank you for your patience. Would you happen to know what a Roman Centurion would be doing with a Celtic-speaker?" He asked, trying to sound something between non-nonchalant and interested at a respectable distance.

"Killing him probably." Mark almost choked.

"Barring that, his family could have been Romanized, or his tribe aligned with Rome and eventually swallowed up. More likely, a Celtic speaker in continued contact with a Roman was a slave."

"Esca is not a slave!" The words were out of his mouth before Mark could temper their verve, or even understood why the notion sent heat shearing across his chest. There was stunned silence on the other end and then a 'Goodness, Sir' or something like it that was equally British and mildly miffed.

"I'm sorry, I just got a little- I'm sorry. Uh, Thank you for your time." Mark disconnected, then thrusts the heels of his hands into his eyes.

This was stupid. So stupid.

Mark stretched on the couch, almost pulled into the fetal position.

This wasn't his thing. History and reading about some time he could have cared less about a year ago. He doesn't like how it's crept inside him.

"Leave me alone, just... leave me alone," He murmurs to his own brain and he imagines a faceless ghost raising a brow at him.

_"Who's stalking who, then?"_

* * *

><p>The weather is crisp and cold. The fields are green, with craggy rocks. There is the smell of heather, though he had never known the scent to place a name to it. It just is. Like so many of his dreams.<p>

"I'm looking for you," He says to the water color figure who reclines not far from where Mark stretches on his back. The sun is weak, but warm for the place and the time. Horses are tied somewhere, eating clover. His horses.

"Why?" Esca wants to know. He's just a shape, and though Mark knows how and where he moves, and even what expression he is making, he can't see it.

"I don't know. It's not done, I don't think."

"We're dead. That seems done enough." Esca picks up a stone, hefts the weight then sends it flying. There might be a splash that follows, Mark isn't sure.

"Then why won't it go away?"

"You're clingy?" Suggests Esca.

"No one has ever called me clingy." Especially not the last few women who he's taken home for the night and then doesn't call. He's really lucky none of them have turned up on his door-step to cut off his balls.

Esca drags a shoulder up in a half shrug. "Masochist?"

"I'm not stupid. Whatever- Whoever we were we aren't any more. It's not about picking up something that existed between two people we haven't been in a thousand years."

"So why rub it in, masochist?"

A gusty sigh. "Not rubbing it in. I want to relieve a regret. I can't go forward until I've done it."

Mark feels a breeze rush them. It smells clean. Cleaner than anything else, from a time when the world was newer and humans were just beginning to learn they could lay claim to it.

"I think...I miss you. Not just now. Always. I just didn't know it was you I was missing, but I won't confuse that with expectations. I don't even know what it is I regret." Mark admits when the silence stretches and stretches.

"Sappy." Chiding, but affectionate.

"You could be more helpful," Mark says.

"Not sure how I can do that. You know I'm not here. Is this even me? Is this who I was then? Or who you think I would be now? Maybe who you imagine I was then is just something you made up. That doesn't even take into account if this is something that's meant to be done. People die and forget and start over for a reason."

Mark looks up at the sky. It's gray and sketched with fuzzy clouds.

"This is really philosophical for my head. I used to just dream about winning the Superbowl. And cheerleaders."

"Jock."

"I just...I don't know what to do. I don't like this."

"Then stop it."

Mark doesn't want to do that, either.

They sit, and the wind bites, but he doesn't seem to be able to move. Not even when he suspects that it has begun to rain.

Mark wakes up shivering and he hates it. Hates how he longs, is sick to be so wrapped up in a face he doesn't know, and probably won't ever see again. Face of a man. Jesus, maybe he is gay. Esca hits too hard, dead center of the chest.

He hates how he knows once Esca came back for him, and it's his turn, against all odds, to return to Esca. He hates how parts of his mind seem to taunt him with tidbits of information, hates the way there is a glimpse and then it's gone.

* * *

><p>"I don't want to let go, I don't want to go to my happy place, I just want to find him. He's in here, and you have to get him out for me." Mark said without prelude, jamming a finger at his temple. Cindra flinches a little at the sudden vehemence in him, and he would normally back down and apologize for scaring her, since, after all, he's a big musclebound guy, but he cant make room for that thought.<p>

"I can't think, I can't breath. Maybe if I know it will stop and I can pick up whatever pieces there are left to have."

He throws himself into the chair.

"Show me Esca,"

"Mark, I'm not sure that this is a good idea." She said in the mellow water-against-the-shore soothing tones.

"I don't care. You can take me, or I'll find someone else. You'll get paid. Didn't you say no one can force you to do anything you don't want to do in hypnosis? Well, I don't want to let go."

They go down and he goes deep, only this time he wants to go, he strains for it, deeper and deeper, down. Relaxing, his toes, his calves his knees... down the stairs. His thighs, his stomach..his chest...into a deeper state of relaxation...fingers uncurling, arms loosening, relaxing... deeper still...his neck, his face, his head...deep sleep.

"Mark, let's go to your special place, and when you're there I want you to find Marcus. Can you see him? He's in his breastplate and his helmet. Can you see him? Good. I want you to walk up to him and look him in the eyes. This time, though, I want you to step inside him."

He nods. Or, maybe it's Marcus. Mark, Marcus, is there a difference?

"Can you tell me where you first saw Esca?"

He can.

It's a small arena that swims before his eyes, not the kind of giant stone Colosseum in the movies, but little and wooden and muddy. He's being moved, big hands helping him. Why? His leg hurts. His leg hurts because he was injured. Injured and discharged. All of him hurts. He's used up, never to reclaim family honor. He's failed Rome. Failed his father. If he ever had something besides a debt, it's gone now.

"Marcus, focus. Look for Esca. What do you see?"

He sees the crowd rippling, milling. A gladiator with the mask of Janus enters the ring with a flourish. The crowd cheers. The gladiator circles the ring, soaking up the praise.

This was Esca? No. It isn't

His opponent enters the ring and Mark's and Marcus' heart constricts.

That is Esca. He is lean and wiry and small. Bronze haired and scowling. Dirty. He's shoved in, a slave, a Briton. Marcus thinks he's too small to be there. Mark sees the muscles and the ferocity and knows that the little ones can fight like crazy mother-fuckers.

A tinny voice talks beside him, but he can't hear it. All he can see is that lonely, hostile little figure who will not dance for the pleasure of the masses. Who looks at the people who see him as meat-toy for their amusement right in the face. Who faces his death with courage and dignity. Who is struck to the ground and still rises to die on his feet until the crowd's favor is lost. It's not love at first sight, but it's something so jaggedly close that there just isn't any air. Marcus has been looked at like he was nothing before, and he knows what it is to be valued only for the accomplishments of his sword. Marcus had accepted that as his only route for redemption, and even the capacity to fulfill his obligation has been taken from him. What else was there? Not just for him, but for that slave down there, who is as trapped as he is. Surely there had to be more.

No one even expected the Briton to win. He was there to die, to thrill the masses with his desperate struggle for life while the Gladiator plunges repeated holes in him so they can feel more alive through his death. Esca won't give them that satisfaction, and though he looks for a clean kill he is not defeated, not ground down.

And Marcus? How can he sit there and let a light so brilliant go out? He cannot let him die.

And so he doesn't.

* * *

><p>Cindra won't let him come the next day. He's going against her advice anyway, she says, so they will do it at a pace she deems healthy. She won't let him come back until Thursday. Waiting is torment.<p>

It comes easier, but it's not like watching a movie. Memories come out of order, and he doesn't really know what is going on half the time. The details are sketchy. He doesn't know why they are doing things, but thinks those details must have been very important in that life, even if now they are trivial. There are gaps missing and nothing is accounted for perfectly. He thunders through fields with Esca on a hunt, he's shuddering by a campfire racked with illness, Esca's face painted in orange and shadow. There are baths, and he's dragged behind a horse, then they are standing at the prow of a ship, skating over water.

What is real is the people. The way they touch him and what they make him feel. He's surprised that Marcus' Uncle Aquila is there, warm and steady, and in him Mark sees his old football coach who he still keeps in contact with. He feels how much a man named Placidus is like Catherine's older brother Tom; someone whose teeth he just wants to kick in. A painted man in a mohawk streaks across his mind, and he's that jerk Liam Conners from work, who never forgets, and indeed, takes a kind of delight in reminding Mark that he's better and more qualified, not to mention capable, than Mark will ever be at the job. That, he, Liam, is the one that deserves to climb, because he as the skills, and all Mark has are parents who own the place. Mark has never even managed to feel angry at Liam, because he's right, he deserves it.

Mark just didn't know he felt that way because Marcus throttled and drowned him.

Esca is more complicated. Marcus has a lot of confusing emotions about him, and Mark can't pick through them fast enough. They well inside him, are all piled against one and other, many conflicting, want torn with should. Kinship. Disparity. Loyalty. Betrayal. Respect. Caution. Friendship. Duty.

Then it's deeper and more uncertain, and the emotions take an edge of longing. Mark can taste desire and fear and regret. Marcus doesn't like to feel how he feels. Like it might betray not only Esca, but some inner principals. It's Mark who sees that Rome and Slavery yawn a precipice between them that is a chasm neither man can cross, no matter how both might reach.

The sessions leave him drained. Each one lessens the pressure and he can sleep. His leg doesn't hurt any more. Marcus's world is past, and each time he dips into it, it some how feels more restful. More like he could let it go.

Except Esca.

He suspected what must have been down the embankment months ago. The reason why Marcus and Esca never managed to cross the divide, or even acknowledge how much they wanted to could only have been demise. Mark doesn't want to see it, does not want to see Esca's death ripple before his eyes, but he can't not see this thing through to the conclusion.

"What is the end?" Cindra asked him and he is amongst the fighting once again, and the sounds he has heard so often play like a familiar soundtrack whose notable components he can anticipate. He still evades the same obstacles, still dispatches the men, replaying the scene from it's start in the same footfalls as before. Yet, this time when his feet are tumbling down the hill, sending dirt up in sprays like water he is ready to know.

Esca is there, little and vicious, fighting with a snarl. Heat blooms in Marcus' chest when he sees his friend alive and kicking. And stabbing. He doesn't really remember who they are fighting, or why, except for a vague sensation that he is responsible for their presence. They're just shadows of the past. He works his way over, shoving and hacking. He sees when Esca sees him. A part of a smile, a twitch of the wry mouth. They are back-to-back.

"Are you alright?" He shouts over the sound. Or, at least, it was something that meant that. Not in English. Mark doesn't know the language. Latin, he supposes, but he knows what Marcus meant.

Esca is fine. Maybe a little banged up, but nothing that wouldn't mend. He's sunburned, but that's the climate.

Marcus suggests they leave. Quickly. His leg is hurting.

They decide the best route to do it in a warrior's short-hand of phrases, all the while combat washes over them. They can't win, Marcus knows that. He's a trained warrior, but he's crippled, and Esca, as cagey and lithe as he is, is no match for numbers. Marcus is not going to see him suffer here, when he has sacrificed so much.

He isn't sure what happens, then. It was too quick. He just knows that in a moment he senses danger and he shifts to cover Esca's body with his own. It's not something he thinks about. He just does it.

The pain rips through him, and Mark and Marcus must have yelled together because Cindra's distant voice meshes with Esca's cry as she tells him to step back, to step away, not to be Marcus anymore, to step out of his skin, but he can't. Not yet. It's so real.

In his mind the frantic action continues, and he's falling, falling. Pain shatters down his torso, worse than his leg. Worse than anything. And he can see Esca. He looks devastated, and Marcus knows.

He can see the Briton turn his fury to the attacker and another body falls, spouting blood like a fountain from the throat into the dust.

"Marcus!" It's muted, the yell. Far away. "No, Marcus, don't you dare! Stay with me!" There's a curse Esca's native language, and something that is pleading. Esca's hands are pressing, pushing to stop the bleeding, his face knotted anguish in as he sees the extent of it. Marcus winces when hands lay over bare tissue

Blood thickens in his throat. He has to tell Esca. In a moment it will be too late. He chokes the name, and raises his hand to cup his friends cheek, leaving stark red smears. Esca grasps it in his own calloused grip and squeezes the fingers. It's anchoring.

Mark feels it then. Feels it all so sharply that he wonders it doesn't cut down into his soul, because he is Marcus at the same time as he is not. Esca is inside his heart. Even with Rome staring down on him, Marcus can't care any more. He wants to tell Esca what is inside of him, before it is too late. It will be too late. His vision is swimming and the pain is so beyond pain that he almost can't feel it. He tries to form the name, just the name on his lips, and he spits up something hideous tasting.

"Marcus! Stay with me!" Wide blue eyes. Wild blue eyes.

Esca can't see the shadows approaching behind him, he's too fixated on staunching a wound never to be closed, but Marcus' dwindling vision can. His confession dies to a warning. Not Esca, please Mithras, not Esca! Do not let him have killed Esca!

Then it is too late. He can't see any more, and no words have left his lips.

"...Come out Mark, it's time to leave Marcus. Esca is safe, Mark, just like you are safe. We're going up the stairs now, Mark..."

He isn't ashamed about crying this time.


	3. Chapter 3

Rights and So forth: Nothing is mine. I borrowed without asking.

Warnings; Bit of language is all.

Rating; PG

**Psychosomatic Remembrances**

**Part Three**

"And look at this big lug!" Catherine smooshes her face against his and then gives him three kisses in a row on his cheek, making 'mmmwa!' noises in between each one. Mark rumples his nose in amused patience and a little bit of pain; her hanging diamond earrings cut into his face. She's a little tipsy.

"I'm sooo glad you're heeeere!" Catherine gestures with her champagne flute to the other guests Mark had been talking nonsense to. "Last year he couldn't come to Aspen, so I kidnapped him this year. Monte Carlo is good for the soul."

"My soul feels pretty good," Mark admits. "And it was the kind of kidnapping without duct tape, thankfully."

The group gives one of those polite chuckles you make at parties.

"Awww...I just love him." Catherine pinches one of his cheeks next. "I also love his new job."

Mark liked it too. He felt fresh and new, and, at the same time, old and content. He didn't even find satisfaction imagining killing Liam Conners, though he'd left the dude gaping when Mark left his resignation at Waterman Enterprises over a year ago and suggested to Liam maybe there was a place for him all the way at the top. It was like karma, kinda.

"I love this place, I love all of you, I think I love everything." Catherine carries on.

Mark swipes her mostly full drink and signals for some coffee. "Otherwise you'll be too drunk to blow out all the candles on your cake without falling in." He says when she sticks her tongue out at him.

"Spoilsport."

"It's too nice a dress to ruin with icing. And expensive."

"Aww...maybe I just love you," Her head sags onto his shoulder, and Mark excuses them from the group to walk Catherine over to the balcony railing. It's warm, and the sea glitters below by the lights of the shore and a fat moon hovering overhead. Music chases along the breeze. Monte Carlo was good for the soul. They stand together, Catherine with an arm tucked through his and let the salty air assail them.

"Did I?" She says after a time, when her hands are full of a coffee cup and she's taken a few sobering sips.

"Did you what?" Mark asks.

"Love you. You know. Before." She says the last part in a stage whisper. She's the only one he's told about his trip through the rabbit hole. He's proud of her. No matter how much she loves gossip, she's kept it behind her teeth, even if sometimes she thinks he's the Great Oz.

"I don't know." Mark answers honestly. "What do you think?"

"I think...you've always felt like you've belonged with someone else. Like you've got a name. Right here." She zips a finger across his left breast, as if he was wearing a name tag. "I think it took me a while to get it, what you were explaining. That it wasn't man or woman; it was just this one person, and it didn't matter what the packaging was, they were for you. I'm sorry about Jeffery. And Keisuke. And Tony. And Wayne."

"And Dante?"

"Alright, geez, him too. I just wanted you to be happy. You were sad for so long. I thought happy meant you were gay now and a few blind dates would be helpful."

Mark chuckled. He couldn't help it. He pulled her in for a half hug and rubbed her arm. Catherine was just the kind of girl who needed to pull out a label-maker so she'd know where to shelve him. He got that. He just wasn't ready to label himself. That tended to cut back on your options.

Catherine looks up at him, and her eyes go all squishy. "I want that for me, a one true love. I thought about being jealous of you, but then I thought about what it must be like to lose that and remember loosing it."

"Your mascara will run," He fetches a handkerchief out of his pocket in a hurry, and blots her eyes for her before she wrecks all the smokey eyeshadow she probably spent an hour applying.

"I know, but it's so sad."

"It isn't." He goes to work on the other eye.

"Isn't it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because. Even thought you die, it doesn't mean the bonds between the people who mean the most to you break."

"You don't believe in endings?"

"Of course I do. I think it's all the same. An ending is a beginning."

Catherine sniffs.

"No crying," Mark reminds her, and he hears the party go quiet, then start up the notes of 'Happy Birthday'. "Cake."

* * *

><p>There are a lot of things Mark has grown to accept. He isn't Marcus, he's his own man who is free to be a little different (even if he does admit a new appreciation for antique Roman weaponry). He hasn't seen Cindra in years. He doesn't need her, or any other counsel. He's got a path. It's not where he thought he'd walk, but he finds it fits under his feet. He's even a pro at meditation. He lets the past go.<p>

Except for the smallest part of him, which is calmly waiting. He thinks it's that part that believes in fate, in circles. It doesn't bother him, and it doesn't stop him from having relationships, from forging ahead.

He doesn't fool Catherine, even if he'd bothered to lie to her. She knows he's waiting, and is okay with that. She seems to have settled with 'Bi-sexual' and leaves it at that.

He's going to be Man-of-Honor at her wedding. He likes the guy she's marrying, even if Darren is old money and wears too many polo shirts. Mark even foots the bill for a bachelorette party, doing the tame half of the planning and letting the other bride's maids pick out the more wild activities. He lets the gaggle of women escort Catherine out to a night on the town in Reno. He knows it would be way too awkward for them to get rowdy and go to sex shops dragging him along. They can at least pretend the limo driver is blind, deaf and dumb, since they probably won't ever see him again.

She gets married at a Victorian church in Lake Tahoe, since that's where she met Darren, boating on the lake. He has a summer place there, a place Catherine has decided she wants to call home. She says she's done flitting around in glamorous places, that she wants to try being a mom. She wants roots.

He believes her, when she comes down the aisle in some ridiculously expensive dress, her eyes soft and and happy from the inside out, and he remembers that people change. Maybe Catherine was always so busy to distract her from the hole in her own heart.

It's a service dripping with flowers, a huge bridal party dressed in champagne and white, beaming relatives and vows that echo off of old ceilings. Mark is so happy for her he's grinning ear to ear, and he forgets he's in a waistcoat. Most weddings seem to take forever, but this one zips by and too quickly that famous music is chiming and the bridge and groom rush out under sprays of ecologically safe bird-seed.

As soon as the bridal party and guests relocate to the beach-side resort where a tent and dance floor is set up under the trees, he gets to tell her in a toast how pleased he is for her. She starts to get weepy, and he watches her husband read the signs and blot her before her eye make-up runs. While it's a big-brotherly duty he's sad to see go, he doesn't begrudge its loss a bit.

Catherine does know how to throw a party. The food is excellent, the music is great, the cake a monumental pile of sugar-paste flowers, no one makes inappropriate drunk speeches and white Chinese lanterns bob in a breeze like fairy spheres. The bridesmaids even tell him their dresses are awesome, and not disasters whey need to feel shame for having photographic record of. Some people shuff off their shoes to dance barefoot in the sand, rather than on the dance floor laid out, and there's a videographer running around catching everything for posterity. After a time, the very old and the very young move on, having seen the cake cut, the bouquet tossed and nearly everyone dance the chicken dance because Catherine says it's tradition. The romantic and the energetic linger as afternoon dips into evening.

He's sitting at a table with his tie undone and sipping a glass of scotch. He's watching the water, and a middle aged couple with their wedding finery held high as they stroll in the tickling waves. The sun is slowly setting.

"Mark!" Catherine is laughing. Flushed. He smiles, setting down his drink and sitting at attention, taking her hands when she thrusts them his way. She pulls him to his feet.

"Why aren't you dancing?"

"You know I need something with a beat. Anyone can sway to this stuff," The stuff, he's fairly sure, is Gershwin.

Catherine laughs and turns, beckoning someone forward. "Mark, Mark, remember how I told you I was having this genius local guy re-do my cabinets and that you should get him to build you a specialty case for all those old weapons you've started collecting? Mark Waterman, this is Calder Brightman," Mark flicks his gaze away from Catherine, his hand extended.

The world drops away and he thinks Catherine is saying how Calder isn't really a contractor, what he is is a wood artist, and he's really debasing himself in just doing a kitchen, but it all runs over Mark like water.

A thousand and more years later and Esca is shaking his hand.

No. Not Esca, he forces himself to think. Calder. But it's so close to Esca. Firm chinned, with low brows and a spiky cacophony of hair atop his head which probably looked sleep fuzzed on purpose. His hand is rough, the hand of a craftperson, and his body is lean and taunt. When Mark looks into his eyes they're gray-blue, and when he looks really deep he just knows. Even if he wasn't wearing a hauntingly familiar face Mark thinks he might have recognized him, because Esca is in his blood, stitched into the fabric of his very soul.

"Well, aren't you going to say something?" Catherine elbows. "He's not really this awkward around new faces." She confides to Calder.

"I know," Calder says, retrieving his palm. "He seemed reasonably eloquent when he was toasting you."

"Just caught me at a tongue-tied moment, I guess. My mind was miles." Mark recovers. He remembers to smile. He has to be normal, even when his heart shudders and skips unsteadily in his chest.

"No shit," Calder nods.

"It's...nice of you to do work for Catherine. She's been bragging about you a lot."

"It has not been bragging, Calder, not bragging." Catherine says.

"Boasting, then." Mark smiles. He cannot tear his eyes away. Why should he look so much like Esca? It doesn't seem right at the same time as it swells him with heat. He knows that he doesn't look all that different from Marcus.

Circles.

"It has been a few minor comments about how you are going to make my kitchen an artful place to cook, and artists should be nurtured in economies like this one, so Mark should commission you." Catherine says.

"I'm flattered you're pimping me out." Calder smiles. Brief, polite.

Catherine laughs and is swept away into her new husbands arms for another dance.

Alone, with Calder, Mark has never been so inarticulate in his life. Their conversation shudders and pauses, then lumbers. There are so many things he wants to say, but on the spot he doesn't know how to say them. Foolishly, he realizes he should have been practicing for this eventuality. Should have had a note-card all neatly inscribed an carried around in his wallet like a condom, a talisman to bring fortune his way. He doesn't know how to not sound like he's just trying to pick Calder up. It's not the time and the place, he knows that. So he basks in a presence, working over rough conversation about Calder's work, and how he knows Catherine and other banalities and Jesus he wished...he wished there was recognition in those sharp eyes.

But he's not Esca. He's Calder.

And in a few minutes he says that he was just on his way out when Catherine nabbed him, that he better get going.

Bereft, Mark can just watch the little frame turn and stride confidently away. It's the hardest thing he's done ever, maybe, to force himself not to get up, not to make an ass of himself, to keep his mouth shut and not call Calder back and say something horrendously pitiful and borderline crazy.

So he does what any man does when he has to watch something he can't and shouldn't have walk away. He orders another drink.

* * *

><p>"Aren't you supposed to be upstairs being deflowered?" Mark asks when he opens the the door to his hotel room, and Catherine is standing there in a robe at some ridiculous morning hour with sunshine being repulsively cheerful. His mood is foul. He hasn't slept well. Alcohol might have soothed parts of him, but he wasn't about to drink enough to get well and roaring drunk at Catherine's wedding. He may have been pathetic, but he wasn't enough of an asshole to ruin the day for Darren and Catherine.<p>

"Funny." Her eyes are sober and he braces an arm against the door. He rolled out of bed to answer the door, and is still in his sweat pants and under shirt.

"Well?" He asks as she just looks at him.

"That was him, wasn't it?"

He stiffens. For a split second he wants to pretend he doesn't know what she's talking about so then they don't have to discuss it. He isn't in the mood.

"After I stopped trying to hook you up, I accidentally found him."

"Yeah." It comes out on a sigh.

Catherine's eyes tumble away, and her murmur is both revelatory and directed not at him. "There are no accidents, are there?" She straightens back to him. "You should have tried dating one of the guys I hooked you up with a hundred years ago, then you would have at least had some practice. I've never seen you fumble, like that. You've always been really good at the lines."

"I wasn't trying to pick him up, Catherine."

"You know what I mean. And I know you. I know it mattered."

Mark presses his hands against his eyes. "I don't want to talk about it." Ever. "And your husband is waiting. Breakfast in bed. Marital bliss. Whatever."

He tries to close the door, but she wedges it open with her hand. Sympathy. Determination. Then she holds up something hooked in two fingers. A coat.

"I promised I'd get it to him. The coat-check guy lost it."

Mark's eyes fasten on the coat.

"Lost it." He repeated.

"Fine. It grew legs and walked into my suite. What you should say is 'thank you Catherine, I won't screw it up this time, thank you for finding my dream man for me against all cosmic odds Catherine, you are the best friend ever'. I put his business card in the pocket. It has the address."

He takes the jacket gently, almost reverently in big hands that are actually trembling. Like it's the damn Shroud of Turin. He resists bringing it to his face to smell.

Catherine smiles. "Go get him, tiger."

It's both a workshop and a home accessed by a two mile dirt road off the lake, isolated enough that a visitor could be heard coming a mile away. There are windows everywhere, so Calder can probably see everything. No architectural spit-up, it's been remodeled and personalized with the clever hands of someone who knows wood to be made into something completely his own. Outside there are stacks of partially chopped fire wood, dirt bikes and the domestic mess of a guy living on his own. Esca lives out here, wild and free, not making war, but art. It pleases Mark.

When Mark knocks on the door and it opens the smell of wood wafts out, warm and earthy. Mark can see the work-room is bright with early morning sunlight streaming in through huge windows with no curtains. The sky is open and endlessly blue today. At night the stars must be breathtaking.

Calder looks at him blankly.

"I'm Mark. Mark Waterman. We met at the wedding. Catherine's Wedding. Last night." Mark rambles.

Calder quirks a brow and it stabs right through Mark.

"You forgot this."

Mark extends the jacket. Calder takes a moment to identify it as his own, then reaches to take it.

Mark holds it, refusing to release. He looks into eyes he remembers. Wildly blue.

"I need to say something. Something crazy. I'm not unbalanced, but it'll still sound crazy, and I still need to say it. I've been waiting a long time to say it."

He watches Calder's eyes go from puzzled to wary. Mark lets go of the jacket and Calder's pose becomes rigid and full of suspicion.

"A few hours doesn't seem like such a long time to wait." Sarcastic.

Mark closes his eyes. "But sometime B.C. is."

Calder snorts.

"Wait, Please," Mark says when Calder turns to go inside, dismissing him. He puts everything he hopes into those words, and knows that, not being much of a liar, his face is an open book. No touching, hands held up. Calder turns, and Mark looks in those eyes and prays something in his face or eyes hesitates the compact body.

Calder makes a sound of irritation, makes a sharp 'hurry it up' slash with his hand and then mutters. "Should have my head checked. Yeah, what?"

Mark takes a breath. Pieces and parts he composed while vigorously showering fly out the window. He can't remember how he planned to start.

"I'm...not good at this sort of thing, with the words." He preludes.

Calder gives him a look tinged with incredulity. " Really? You didn't rehearse your stalker speech? You've had over twelve hours to work it out."

The words should cut into him, but they don't.

He lets go. Some part of Marcus is in him, and he knows what he wants to say.

"Marcus...was full of regret, when he died. Not for anything he had done; well, maybe a few things, but mostly he regretted the things he didn't do, that he wasn't strong enough and he couldn't protect Esca, but mostly that there were things he never got to say and that he left things unfinished between them. He didn't expect to die, not that anyone does, but..." Mark shook his head to clear it, eyes pressing closed a moment. "There was so much...stuff for Marcus. History and honor and the way he thought he should feel about things made something simple and wonderful into something confusing. Esca was everything to Marcus, his friendship saved him and made him a better man. Esca was loyal and true and good and he deserved to be free, really free. Marcus regretted he couldn't give that freedom, and then regretted there wasn't more, but if someone had to be left standing, if one of them was left alone without the other, Marcus would rather have died than to be the survivor."

Mark shoves his hands in his pockets, knowing Calder must think him incredibly lame. What he feels is relief. So much he needed to say. He feels the knotted threads that had been digging bands into his soul release and unwind. He lets the last piece go, the piece that had never been spoken.

"Marcus just needed Esca to know that he loved him, I guess, and that, at the end, he wasn't ashamed of it and that feeling that way for Esca -loving him- was something he would never, ever regret." Awkward now. Mark hunched his shoulders, shoving himself back into his jacket. "That's...that's all."

When Calder didn't move or say anything, Mark turned swiftly and takes the steps down to the gravel, heading for his rental car. Flight seemed cowardly, but he couldn't bear to hear derision, now that the words, in-eloquent as they were, had been said. Calder's face had been impassive for the duration, but his eyes were on Mark, never wavering.

He was groping keys with slick hands when a voice hollered.

"Hey!"

Mark paused, took a breath, then turned.

Calder was standing in the open doorway, still, the sunlight behind him making his hair into a burnish halo. He gripped the frame, the jacket thrown over his shoulder, an odd expression on his face. For a moment, they just look at each other.

Calder shifted his stance, one bare foot inside, the other over the threshold. He looked uncomfortable, now.

"...Would it be weird to say I knew that?" He calls. "But that, even thought I knew it, I'm glad to-or, no...it was important to hear _you_ say it?"

"No weirder than my knowing I needed to say it." Mark answers. He doesn't scale weird any more. He's clutching his keys in a death grip in an effort keep cool.

Calder rubbed his knuckles against the heel of his other hand. "So...I'm Esca, then?"

" You were, maybe. Once."

"And you're Marcus."

"Not any more."

They grow silent and fall back into just looking at one and other.

Calder breaks the contact by looking back into his work room. His stance shifts again before deliberation fades and he flicks his head towards the open portal while looking at Mark. "You want some coffee?"

Oh God yes.

"If you mess with me, I will end you." Calder warns as Mark approaches the stoop. "I'm not big, but I will fuck you up seriously. I have chainsaws."

Mark smiles. He's knows it's a big sloppy grin, but he can't stop it. Doesn't want to stop it.

"Duly noted."

Calder shuts the door behind them. "I had this dream about a dude with a broom on his head last night, and he looked a lot like you, it was really fucking weird..."

Fini.


	4. The Fairy Godmother's Christmas Miracle

Warnings: I do not own anything.

Author: SharpAndSweet

Rating: I use the f-word a lot. I think if you have one f-word it can still be PG but two makes it PG-13, but there isn't a lot of lascivious content, in case you were getting your hopes up.

PRSMX or **The Fairy Godmother's Christmas Miracle; A sequel to Psychosomatic Remembrances**

"I'm so excited for you!" Catherine said over her shoulder, as she is adjusting the big gold bows on the Christmas tree for, by Mark's count, the seventh time. He isn't really sure why there were bows on the tree, but seeing as it was the only one of three with bows in the house, he hadn't questioned it. This was the 'relax tree' by the granite hearth in the sunken informal sitting area, and featured bows, gold and red spheres, red lights and a number of inherited Christmas ornaments from both Catherine's and Darren's family collections.

"Why are we so excited for me?" In truth, she should be excited for herself, and the lump she was smuggling under her designer maternity top. Mark finished fixing the hot cider at the stove of possibly the most gorgeous kitchen ever built, but then, he was biased. It was a bit of a shambles, since much work had gone into prepping dinner, and even now a prime rib roasted merrily in the oven, and a hazelnut torte decorated with marzipan holly berries and chocolate leaves sat under a glass dome. None the less, warm toned wood caressed top-of-the-line appliances in organic lines, and featured a built in spice rack with enough room to have saffron from two different parts of the globe, tiny decorative shelves, expansive granite topped counters, and no storage space only reachable by seven foot tall giants. It was both inlaid with darker wood and carved beautifully. The foodies Catherine invited over almost creamed themselves when they saw it.

Mark poured the hot cider into a tea pot, and set it alongside a plate of exactly two cookies to tide Catherine over until dinner. Visiting a lot had given him insights to her needs.

"First Christmas with a significant other is always really informative. It's where you discover if your partner is worth hanging on to, based on their mettle when facing celebration, tradition and the thwarting thereof, gift giving, inconveniences, seasonal pressure, holiday traffic, Christmas carols on eternal repeat, and, of course, family." Catherine stood back to admire the replaced bow, then started rearranging the ornaments around it. "I dumped Bryon after the first Christmas we spent together. It turned out he had the emotional maturity of a sixth grader when faced with a slightly tipsy octogenarian who accidentally spilled gravy on him."

Mark set the tray on a low coffee table. "Come sit down before you strain something. Have a cookie."

"Men are such babies about babies. You're going to have to man up if you're going to be the God-Father." None the less Catherine gave the tree one last look before heading over to sit in the special maternity chair bought for her service. "Anyway, I knew I wanted to marry Darren when he suggested we have Christmas Eve at his family because they like to open their presents that night, and then he would drive us to a Christmas brunch at my parent's. Compromise. AND he took me to the Nutcracker, even though he hates ballet." She gave a sigh, and accepted the cup Mark poured for her. She inhaled the steam and took a slow sip.

Mark smiled and rested back in his seat, stretching long legs out. The house was ruthlessly decorated, but somehow was still homey instead of making you feel like you were in a department store and you weren't to touch anything. Probably that was Catherine's touch. The big windows displayed expansive views of pine trees and Lake Tahoe as still as a mirror in shadowy colors. It was a big change from urban life. Mark had always lived in the city, and never had any quarrel with it. It had its own serenity he could appreciate, though he was learning something about the pace of more rural living.

"So, what did you get Calder?" Catherine said after some long minutes of quiet. She smiled over the rim of her cup.

"It's a surprise." He'd managed to dodge the topic so far, mostly by dangling knowledge of her gifts and then yanking it away.

"Well, not for me. Tell me,"

"No."

"Oh my God, why are you always avoiding this conversation? Hello? Me, Matchmaker. I know about you two."

"Do we have to talk about this?" Mark held up the plate to her and she snatched a sugar cookie Santa and decapitated it aggressively.

"Yes. I have a very excellent track record of helping you, and I think wanting to know what you got your boyfriend for the holiday is perfectly reasonable, especially since I am also a master gift consultant. If you got him an electric toothbrush we will have to do some emergency shopping, stat. Besides, you won't tell me what you got me, so tell me what you your boyfriend."

Urgh. Mark thrust to his feet and paced, carrying his cup of cider. "Look, he...isn't."

"Isn't what? Oh crap, don't say he isn't coming to dinner tonight."

"Isn't...my boyfriend."

Catherine's mouth dropped open, showing off masticated cookie. "He is so. He is! How can you not be dating?"

Mark rolled the cup and tried to answer.

"But, you're out here all the time. I have not seen you so much since we lived in the same building in high school. I mean, you're here, at that B&B, hell, you stayed at his house."

The news distressed Catherine, and she set the plate on her lap.

"And we email. And text. And Call. And Skype. And game." Mark listed.

"Which is what boyfriends and boyfriends do. I assumed things were going great, I mean, you're so happy and together. You smile."

"We see each other, but, I don't know what we are. We don't...you know. I slept on the couch." Friends, is what they were. Mark knew it. Granted, the contact was intense and frequent, but this was a long lost friend. They were just making up for lost time. When the new year started at the friendship had some mileage to it, it would peter out. Mark knew that, and so while he had a good excuse in Catherine's pregnancy- not that he used her, he really did like going to appointments and shopping with her in preparation for her baby- but it was a good opportunity to sneak in visits and lunch and even seeing Calder's work on display at a winter craft show.

"The couch. You mean you haven't even kissed? No, you must have...Oh god. You haven't. And here, I imagined there was all this really hot gay sex going on between you two and you were just too embarrassed to tell me and I thought it would be tacky to ask if you didn't want to talk about it and here you are telling me that what you are is chaste and mopey? And pining? I thought you had an understanding about- hey, where are you going?"

Mark paced the length of the room and then headed to the wet bar down the hall to spike his cider with some brandy. She was right again in that he kind of did need to talk about it, even if he didn't want to. Who else could he discuss it with? He rolled the cup, took a big gulp and topped up the cup with more brandy. He needed the fortification.

When Mark rejoined Catherine on the couch she was chewing on cookie very intently and staring at him.

"Look, it's...complicated." He shot her a look before she could comment about the frequency with which his life tended toward the convoluted. "That day- the day after your wedding, we had coffee. We talked for just...hours. It was great, maybe one of the best days of my life. Whatever the other stuff, I had found a friend on top of everything else. I've always gotten along with most people, but real true friends? He's only my second."

"Then?"

"There is no then. I've just told you what great friends we are." He looked into his cup. Having Calder for a friend _was_ great. Calder was biting and insightful, funny and fierce but also had a streak of gentility he tried to hide. Catherine had always been Mark's confident, it was odd having a really close friend who had the same set of genitals. It opened up a few other topics of discussion.

They spent time just getting to know each other. They never talked about Marcus or Esca after that first day.. It was part of the past, and they had by some agreement decided the direction into which to look was the future.

At first, Mark was convinced he didn't need anything more. Calder was by his side again, if more metaphorically than physically, what with Mark's home being on the east coast. He could reach out at any time- and Calder kept bizarre hours- and Calder would be there. What's more, though mostly their conversations were general guy stuff, Calder seemed to genuinely understand and anticipate Mark while Mark was always finding himself surprised by Calder. He could really tell him anything, and Calder would offer a stark and honest opinion. They shared common ground with a few interest, even, and when teamed up in first person shooter games, they dominated.

The friendship alone was miracle enough, and Mark did not want to tempt the fates.

"Friends." Catherine said, as if trying to wrap her mind around it.

"Friends."

"And that's enough?"

"It's all there is."

"But, you made a big love confession to him."

"No, that was Marcus' love for Esca. I'm not Marcus, he's not Esca. We're not who we were."

"So how does Mark feel for Calder?"

"He's a good friend."

Catherine clicked her tongue "Now you're evading. A simple platonic vs. romantic test; Do you want to take your 'friend' to bed?"

Mark considered the first time Calder had sat down at the computer bare chested and wet from a shower. He had almost swallowed his own tongue. He was fairly certain he had hidden his weird mix of desire and the shame for experiencing said desire for Calder, who had carried on talking about one of his projects unperturbed. Shirtless. Glistening. And bi-sexual-maybe-in-theory became a little less theoretical when Mark realized he was fantasizing about licking droplets of water from Calder's neck, and wondering what kind of noises Calder would make while he did it.

The casualness proved somewhat problematic, since Calder was a free spirit who worked with his shirt off a lot, and had no qualms about firing up his webcam in any state of undress that he happened to be in and then Mark would have to try and converse intelligently and not stare at the divets of flesh by hips that plunged into groin. He usually accomplished this by shuffling a lot of papers and not looking at his web-cam, which irritated Calder because he felt Mark wasn't paying attention when all Mark was trying to do was not pay attention to certain parts of anatomy he should not be attentive to on a friend. It was all rather...complicated.

"I can tell from your face that is a yes. Didn't you ever mention that to him?"

Mark shrugged. Then he nursed his cup. Even if he had dared speak how he felt in a general sense, it was no fair to your friend to spring such an unwelcome complication on your rhythm. Better to keep his gob shut.

It was enough of a no for Catherine to sigh expansively, then lean forward and take the other cookie from the plate.

"When we first met he had a girlfriend. I just figured..." And he hadn't wanted to push it. While he extrapolated that loving another man was easier now than it had been at any other time in history, it could still lose you a friend and Mark didn't want to lose what Calder had become to him. "Besides, what do I know about taking another guy to bed?"

"It's called The Internet and it answers all your questions." Catherine snorted.

"Not the mechanics, I can guess those. It's all the other things."

Catherine made a disgusted sound and struggled to stand. "You two are ridiculous. Just ridiculous, when I think of all the secret little looks that I have watched tossed around while you were really being chicken shit-"

The rest of the sentence was lost to a grunt as Mark assisted her to her feet. She shot him a brief look that was between affection and irritation, then she strode across the room. Mark followed after as she stalked to the entry way and began to yank on her coat, taking up the car keys from the bowl on the little receiving table.

"Where are you going?" Mark said, spiked with alarm.

"I am going to fix this for you. Again."

"No, Catherine." Firmly, Mark planted himself in front of the door. He could hardly imagine what she would do, and, in fact, he didn't want to. He would never have said a word if he thought she was going to do anything except listen and pat his knee consolingly.

She set a mean eye on him and pointed. "You will peel potatoes while I am gone. You will check on the roast and the carrots, you will not touch the table and I will be back in fifteen minutes."

Honestly, it was a little scary, And Mark found himself just a little afraid of the pregnant woman he was quite large enough to manhandle. He'd never seen that set to her jaw before. He hesitated, then held his ground in front of the door, shaking his head at her. Lord only knew what she would do with fifteen minutes and his love life. Or, lack there of. At least now he had his illusions, his fantasies and his right hand. If he lost the former two the latter would be distinctly less appealing.

Catherine's eyes narrowed into little slits. She leaned over, snatched up an umbrella from the cannister and gave him a wallop across the shoulders. It didn't hurt much, but it Mark had never been the recipient of violence from her before. He was more shocked than anything else, and she took the opportunity to elbow him aside and wedge herself out the door.

Mark rushed after her while she headed to the car. "Catherine, you cannot do this. Please don't, Catherine, let me handle this, please. I didn't mean I wanted you to do anything, I was talking, like you wanted." He dogged after her steps until she faced him with hands on hips

"As your self appointed fairy godmother, you should trust me."

It stops him for a moment, considering if she really would do any of the horrible things he's imagining and it's enough for her to act.

She left him standing in her driveway, wondering what the hell she was going to do, and if the fall out was going to wreck his life. Then he went back inside and peeled potatoes numbly, waiting for his phone to ring with an affronted Calder or an apologetic Catherine. Or the police department.

She was back in thirteen minutes, and looked rather smug with herself. When he demanded to know what had transpired, she just smiled sweetly and asked him if he trusted the Spirit of Christmas Romance. He didn't, but she talked over him, asking about Calder's gift again.

"Fine, I bought him a section of black walnut. What did you do, Catherine?"

"Stop worrying."

She smiled, and tapped her finger against her nose and began trimming asparagus. When her front door opened and her husband's voice called she pranced off and left Mark watching the potatoes on the stove while they made muted smoochy sounds in the entry way for an extended period of time.

Darren and Catherine together were so very newly wedded, even with a child on the way. They kissed and they cuddled and they stared at one and other sparkly eyed with intense frequency. There was also the fact that Darren wasn't suspicious of Mark. It would be easy to misinterpret his and Catherine's relationship, and a lot of people assumed they were dating, or that men and women couldn't be friends, and therefore they were up to something illicit. Darren got it, and as Mark got to know him he found that maybe they could be friends too.

When Darren at last entered the room to greet Mark they exchanged pleasantries, then Darren went to change out of his work clothes. Friendly though they were, Mark couldn't bring up the topic once Darren was seated at the kitchen table asking how his wife's day was. Mark wracked his brain, but could not discern what magical thing Catherine could do in under twenty minutes that was somehow supposed to alter something. How could he repair whatever was done so they could resume their standard operation?

At six fifty two the doorbell rang and Mark's stomach dropped through to his feet.

"That's Calder, better get that, Mark." Catherine said, in the middle of sauteing asparagus while her husband mashed potatoes.

Mark's feet were leaden as he trudged to the entry way. What could Catherine have done? Did she talk to Calder? Deface his car? What?

Through the peephole Mark saw the thatch of untidy hair, and cheeks stained pink by cold and a truly ugly if home-made looking scarf. Calder.

"Happy Holidays," Mark opened the door with a smile, determined to bluff his way through whatever had happened.

Calder's face split into a grin and he raised a hand clutching a bottle of wine in greeting. "Hey,"

Mark held the door wider, inviting Calder, and in he came, smelling of sweet wood and evergreen. It had been a few weeks since they had last seen one and other, the week of Thanksgiving, when Mark had come to dine with Catherine. Calder had gone to be with his family, but the day before he left they had spent the entire day together.

"How was the flight out?" Calder asked as he wrestled his arms free of the brown leather coat, Mark holding the bottle. He was dressed in a sweater that probably was a little dorky, but Mark thought it looked adorable on him. Hell, he'd never seen Calder in anything he hadn't looked entirely edible in, and when he wasn't wearing much at all-Mark forcibly halted his wandering mind.

"Bumpy. They don't hand out peanuts any more, either." he said.

"You in danger of starving during those six hours?"

"It was always nice to get some food to distract me from the lack of leg room. Besides, I'm a big guy. I need sustenance." Mark winced. He hadn't meant it to come out like that. He dropped his head a bit, and tried to relax his shoulders from creeping up around his ears whilst he fetched a hanger.

Calder's eyes swept up and down him. "Yeah. You are."

Mark set the bottle on the table and took Calder's coat to hang it up in the closet. "Look, did Catherine happen to call you today?" He asked.  
>"No,"<p>

"Text?"

"No, Why?"

"Calder! Isn't it lovely to see you." Catherine's voice chimed from the dining room doorway, directly across the hall from the foyer. She smiled sweetly at the two of them. Mark's stomach took another dip. Out she came to stand just at the bottom of the two steps which lead to the tiled entry way. She reached out her hands to Calder.

"Thanks for inviting me. Must be a lot of work for someone in your condition." Calder approached, but he wasn't one for kissy face, so he took her hand and shook it. Mark followed along with the wine. He found himself looking at the back of Calder's neck where softly freckled skin delved beneath the soft wool collar of his sweater.  
>"Not with the kitchen you designed me. It's just perfect, not to mention my slave labor, I-oh!" Mark had known Catherine long enough to detect the faint whiff of acting, and his gaze jerked to her. He wasn't sure Calder did, but their eyes both went up when Catherine pointed above their heads, trying to look innocently surprised.<p>

A sad but live chunk of mistletoe had been hooked from the more impressive fake garland that framed the archway by a lopsided ribbon. It had not been there when Mark arrived, and now dangled just over their heads, the kind of scraggly thing sold curbside, which is suddenly where Mark realized it had come. He had been so intent on what lay behind the door he hadn't noticed it's addition when he entered.

His stomach went cold as his eyes flicked to Catherine, who was looking at Calder. "It's bad luck not to, pucker up!" she said.

Calder's mouth quirked and he leaned forward towards Catherine again.

"Not me, I'm clearly outside of the mistletoe zone." Catherine gestured what was presumably the acceptable mistletoe zone, then looked at Mark expectantly. He was fairly certain he went pale.

The energy suddenly went tense and thick. It tingled up and down his forearms as all three parties understood what Catherine intended. Mark considered expiring on the spot. This was Catherine's master plan? Trap them into an awkward kiss- No, not even that, because Calder was never going to kiss him, because they were friends, and adding a weird peer pressure kiss was going to ruin everything. If it even actually happened there was a question of uneven enthusiasm administered by parties involved, which would only leave embarrassment. Then they wouldn't be able to look each other in the face, and then they would stop talking to each other entirely until all contact fizzled into nothing.

Mark did not want to lose Calder.

"I'm sure the luck won't be that bad," Mark tried to bluster, and he held out the bottle. "Look what Calder brought for dinner. I'll just go open it and let it breath,"

Mark proceeded down the steps when Catherine caught his arm. "Oh no, my house, my rules. I don't want any bad juju swimming around just waiting for someone to land on, and me pregnant. What if, by thwarting tradition, your bad luck spins off and hits my poor defenseless baby and she's born blind or with one leg? Won't you feel bad? Won't you feel responsible when there was something you could have done but you chose not to, and my first is born deformed by your lack of consideration?"

Mark stared at her incredulously. He couldn't believe that not only had she said it, but with a straight face.

"We're all mature adults here," Catherine continued, hands on her stomach. "It's not as if I'm asking for tongue."

"No, because that would be unreasonable." Mark had to fight to keep the edge of sarcasm predominate and not his alarm that Catherine was not dropping it. He didn't dare look at Calder. Yes, sure, he thought about kissing Calder, but he certainly didn't want it to be a kiss both parties were goaded into. He wanted Calder to want to kiss him, too.

Catherine crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

"Catherine, " Mark warned.

"I am not putting my baby at risk just because you want to flaunt tradition."

"Two men kissing under the mistletoe is not a tradition. It's probably a cause for lynching in several southern States."

"It's my house and kissing under the mistletoe is my new tradition, and it is gender blind."

"Tradition is something you've done over and over, not something you've just made up,"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Calder made a noise in his nose, still standing two steps above in the entry way. It put their heights about even. He leaned over, fisted his hand in Mark's shirt, and yanked him over. Mark hardly had time to process what was commencing before warm lips were pressed over his own. He expected it to be over in a flash, thought that as soon as the imprint was there it would be gone.

Calder lingered. Not very long, but long enough for it to be no perfunctory fulfillment. Mark felt something warm and pleasant blossom in his chest. It hadn't been quick, but it had been nowhere near long enough. He hadn't closed his eyes, a fleeting moment of noticing how long Calder's closed eyelashes were and then Calder was moving away before Mark could force himself to move. He stared at Calder, who pressed his lips together, looking somewhat sheepish, eyes twitching to and fro- everywhere but at Mark.

Mark took both stairs in one step, drawing himself closer to Calder, whose blue eyes ceased wandering and fastened on him, sharp and cautious. They softened somewhat, but retained a core of wariness. Mark cupped Calder's face. The face of a man he held so dear. His fingers brushed the good, clean and stubborn line of jaw, recently shaved and smooth. He was still pink, but was it from the cold? It only felt warm between them, and they stood so close, chests almost touching. Indeed, heat flowed between then, exacerbated by tension.

Mark stroked a thumb along Calder's bottom lip, watching it drag wetly, waiting for some revulsion, for some sign that Calder would pull back and away.

When Calder just stood there, breathing shallowly Mark bent, meeting their mouths again. This time it was softer, properly done. No swift thing that was too quick to satisfy but too slow to be empty. No. Gentle and leisurely, Mark touched his mouth to Calders, lips hesitating a moment to see what their reception would be. He forced himself not to demand, to kiss with tender encouragement.

Whatever became of it, for that moment it was splendid. Calder was letting Mark kiss him. No- Calder was kissing him back! More than that, Calder was taking hold of Mark's waist and drawing him nearer until they stood flush.

The kiss changed, from some slow and sweet experiment it heated, feeding a hunger long subdued until it rent the sides of it's prison, and released with flares of bottled passion Whose mouth opened first was unknown, only that Mark was suddenly tasting Calder, which seemed to predominately be cinnamon flavored tic-tac, but under that, a spark of copper, a scratch of cloves. Exotic, but comforting.

Mark could hardly think, was almost forgetting to breath, with his hands full of Calder. The release of raw want, and feeling it answered spurned a heady wave of joy and need. When he next noticed what had happened, Mark had Calder pinned against the wall, one leg between Calder's, and Calder was groaning into his open mouth over the wet sounds of kissing, and his hands were actually clutching Mark's butt.

"Honey, what's going on?" Mark heard Darren say distantly.

"It's a Christmas Miracle! Mark and Calder are making out. And groping. My work here is done. I have fairied the Godmother out of these two noodles again."

"You're the Christmas Miracle."

"Aw, honey." Smooching sounds ensued.

It was enough to jar Mark back to reality. He was fairly certain he went red- but not as red as Calder. Looking at him was almost a mistake, because his eyes were foggy and his mouth was bee-stung and even though Mark didn't have the first idea how to please another guy he wanted to sling Calder over his shoulder like a possessive neanderthal, haul him off to the nearest bed and try his damnedest.

He forced himself to release Calder, who took a polite step back. They stood mutely while Catherine and Darren smiled at them, then turned and headed back into the kitchen. "Dinner in ten!"

They stood, side by side, not looking at one and other or speaking for a good minute. Mark looked at his shoes, and at the sad little clump of mistletoe which seemed entirely too smug for a chunk of weed.

"So..." Mark cleared his throat. Already the wave of heady giddiness was retreating as he began to wonder if it had been too much. Did he imagine Calder had been as involved as he? What if he'd...Retreat. Retreat was best.

"I'm...sorry...about that. It got a little out of...yeah..."

Calder turned suddenly and took hold of Mark's shoulders, turning so they faced one and other. He looked him dead in the eye. "Listen. I'm not."

"You're not?" Mark was buoyant for a moment before focusing again. "Why not?"

"Fuck, how many assholes do you know who run around in their underwear in November in a house heated by a wood stove?" Calder rolled his eyes, and gave Mark a little shake. His expression very clearly said that Mark should think very hard.

"You were half naked on purpose." Mark bit his lower lip, then smiled. "I just thought you were, you know, a hippie nudist artist or something. Why didn't you say anything?"

"We were just getting to know each other at first, and then because, you've never done anything with a man before. I didn't want to come on too strong. If I freaked you the fuck out you might run for the hills. I like being your friend too much for that." His tone was gruff, tempered by significance. "I figured I'd wait for you to come around."

"I didn't want to lose your friendship either," Mark confided, rubbing the back of his head. "It all started sort of weirdly and I didn't want you to think that I expected anything."

Again they stood in silence while Catherine and Darren moved around the kitchen. There was a flash as she came into the dining room and set a bowl on the table, then left, rather pointedly not looking into the foyer.

"Wait, lounging around half clothed wasn't coming on too strong?" Mark said.

"Clearly, you didn't notice it was out of the ordinary."

Mark cleared his throat. "I did notice. But I didn't think I should notice, so I pretended not to notice."

"I was getting tired of waiting. You slept on my _couch_." The tone indicated that Calder could not think of anything more unfair.

Catherine passed by again, carrying a bowl of potatoes mounded high. This time she slipped a look through the doorway. She caught them looking back at her and she smiled.

"She's gonna be intolerable from now on." Mark said, crossing his arms.

Calder shrugged. "Until the kid is born. Then she'll be too busy."

"Catherine always finds time to meddle."

"Fuck her, what about," Calder gestured between them, not meaning the dismissal of Catherine unkindly, Mark could see at once. He just wasn't letting the issue die.

"I don't know. Should we...date?" he asked hesitatingly.

"For starters,"

Mark found himself smiling again. He shut his eyes, then leaned back and laughed. It felt good. Another knot of tension eased. Sure, there were like fifty other problems now, like about how they were going to manage a relationship, who was going to uproot themselves when the time came, and how exactly you found the prostate on a real person and not a two dimensional jpg, but he found that all those worries stacked against the simple pleasure of knowing the person you liked liked you back were nothing.

Boundless enthusiasm swelled him and Mark laughed again, then picked up Calder and spun him around with him in his arms. Sure, it probably looked silly, but Calder weighted less than a half a minute, and Mark needed to feel him in his arms once more, feel that he really belonged there.

Calder shouted and punched him in the shoulder, but it didn't really hurt so Mark knew he wasn't trying all that hard. "Do NOT pick me up, fucker! It's undignified! First rule of dating."

Mark grinned at him, and then set him down. Then he took a step back so Calder didn't think he was going to grab him again. "I'm a rule breaker."

"Liar. You're a straight arrow. You spellcheck your text messages and use punctuation. Obey all the rules."

"Maybe not that one."

"Yes, that one. Chainsaws, remember?"

"Chainsaws." Mark nodded.

Catherine said from the next room. "Dinner's getting cold,"

"I don't have the first idea what I'm doing," Mark warned as they headed for the dining room. "I'll probably do things wrong."  
>Calder shrugged. "So? I will too. We'll figure it out."<p>

They sat. They ate. They laughed. They talked, the four of them, and for Mark the memory would always be painted with a hazy, magical glow that should only occupy Christmas cards and Victorian carols. When Mark walks Calder out to his old truck close to midnight they kiss again, and it's tentative and warm and over too fast. Tomorrow they have their own holiday plans made when they were just friends and not gentleman friends.

"Plenty of time," Calder says, patting Mark's cheek. Then he squints at the truck bed, where Mark sneaked his Christmas present between dinner and dessert. He gives Mark the eye, and he can only duck his head and try not to grin. Calder rolls his eyes, nimbly climbing into the truck to undo the bungie cords and pull up the tarp. Mark shoved his hands in his pockets, his nose pricked with cold, breath coming in pants of steam.

"Fuck, Mark..." The tone is soft, pleased when the light of the porch betrays the boards and blocks of black walnut. Calder strokes the wood with those rough, clever fingers, tracing the grain. His eyes are soft, and that also makes Mark go warm inside.

"It's too much, God, what this must have cost..." Black walnut is not cheap.

"You said you always wanted to work with it."

"Jesus," Crouched in the truck bed Calder strokes a flat palm down the length of the wood and the motion goes straight to Mark's pelvis.

"Merry Christmas," he says, when Calder doesn't respond.

Calder hasn't looked up from the wood, but touches it for another minute before forcibly covering it with the tarp, and re-securing it. He hauls out of the truck, jumping down with a single easy movement. The passenger door squeaks when it opens, and before Mark knows it a package is thrust into his hands. Calder's eyes raise to his for a moment, a single moment where blue eyes burn bright and deep and that's a new punch, because there's an intimacy there, something different than just kissing or talking. Calder does lean forward, and kisses Mark briefly and roughly. And then presses their brows together. For the span of a few heartbeats they are still, breathing, together. Then Calder is in the car and heading out.

Back inside the house Mark can hear Catherine and Darren washing dishes and laughing. Bing Crosby is singing Christmas carols, and fresh from the cold the smell of pine and cinnamon touch the nose.

Flushed, Mark looks at the package. He should put it under the tree, and wait for the day after tomorrow. He should be patient.

He tears open the gold paper with the silver poinsettias and finds a cardboard box, which he prises the tape from as the wrapping falls to his feet. It is joined by handfuls of tissue paper, packed tight around something.

It is a carving. An eagle, about the width of Marcus' hand, with wings extended and illuminated with luscious detail. Carved of pine, maybe, a soft off-white color, and it shone with a simple matte finish. Another, deeper feeling moves through Mark, and he finds himself tearing up for reasons he doesn't remember. The eagle moves something within him.

There is a note tied to the metal bar which attaches the carving to the stand, written in a pointed, erratic hand.

_I began carving this the week that I met you. It felt like it was yours._

Mark closes his eyes, and lets the packaging drops so he can hold the eagle to his chest. A new knowing fills him.

He knows everything is right where it ought to be.

* * *

><p>AN; I want to thank everyone who has reviewed or commented on this little tale. I didn't expect to write a sequel, I was really going to let it be and let your imaginations filled in what came next. However, I got into the Christmas Spirit, and this came out. Not so much a sequel, but maybe a coda? Don't know. Thank you for reading!


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